1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a schedule execution managing apparatus, method and system, that is, a schedule execution managing apparatus managing the execution of one or more schedules by using a time or a different condition as a trigger, and more particularly, to a schedule execution managing apparatus and method that facilitates a schedule change in an emergency and allows a schedule definition to be easily reused in a different environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is assumed that a schedule targeted by the present invention is defined as a combination of the content of a job and its planned start time information. If a plurality of contents of jobs are executed in parallel under the management of a schedule execution managing apparatus according to the present invention, each of the jobs belongs to a particular schedule. Namely, a plurality of schedules normally run in parallel.
With a conventional system for such schedule execution, for example, “every day”, “every week”, “specified date”, etc., can be specified as a schedule execution day, but a start time is specified with an absolute time.
Additionally, although a particular schedule can be manually executed in an emergency, a schedule associated with the executed schedule cannot be made to run by automatically changing its start time.
Furthermore, a schedule A can be executed by setting a predetermined time interval after a schedule B is terminated. However, there is no method changing the start time of the schedule A so as to set a predetermined time interval in synchronization with a change in the start time or in the execution time of the schedule B.
A first problem in such a conventional technique is the lack of flexibility in an emergency. Namely, if a plurality of schedules correlate to one another, and if the start time of each of the schedules is specified with an absolute time, associated schedules must be manually extracted, and the start times of all of the schedules must be manually reset when the start time of any of the schedules must be urgently changed.
Also, if reuse of schedule information is desired in a different environment, for example, under which an operation time is different, other than in an emergency, the start time must be manually set.
A second problem is that there is a difficulty associated with a change in the start time of the schedule B on which the schedule A has a dependency. On the premise that the schedule A has a dependency on the schedule B, and is started after a predetermined amount of time elapses from the termination point of the schedule B, the start time of the schedule A cannot be automatically changed while maintaining the above described execution interval if the start time or the execution time of the schedule B is changed.